Category: Ghumakkar

Sometime back a friend suggested that why do not I write about small technical hacks/problems which I encounter and manage to solve, as part of my website-hosting drill. Whether it is related to WordPress, PlugIns, MySql or general web-server config things, ranging from redirection to .htaccess to what not.

So here’s a small thing which I did. Interestingly it was hard to find the solution, though there is simple configruation which I finally discovered and it works. Hope this is useful. I am also sharing the context here, on why I had to find a way to solve this.

Context

Just like all the other million blogs, we also have an E-mail subscription service at www.ghumakkar.com. We use MailChimp (disclaimer : if you click and sign-up for a paid program I get something in return). It been going well with Mailchimp.

In one of the recent WPBeginner blogpost, they covered all the smart ways to get more leads viz. emails sign-ups. One of the methods was to use a ‘Call to Action’ button at Facebook.

Ghumakkar has a FB page (www.facebook.com/ghumakkar) and we have 85K odd fans/followers. So I thought that I must add this button, allowing readers to quickly sign-up for our once in a week email.

And then I discovered that If I could only find that button. I did a lot of search, read posts but no luck. It was frustrating since everyone said that it is there but it was NOT there on my page.

I infact looked at a solution posted by someone at FB but no, it doesn’t work

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/312169205649942/?ref=u2u

FB and WPBeginner and everyone is asking me to click a button, only if I could find it.

So, if you are like, then read for another couple of minutes and hopefully you would get rewarded with this button on your FB page.

Problem

I want to add a button on my Facebook page. FB tells me to look for a button which says ‘Add a Button’. I looked everywhere but can not find it.

Solution

1. Go to your page and click ‘Settings’. You would see something like this

Facebook Page Settings

2. Click ‘Edit Settings’

Facebook Page Templates

3. And choose ‘Business’ as your new Template.

And Voila, refresh your page a few times or just restart your browser and you would see the shiny, blue, “Add a Button” button.

Add a Button

Hope this was useful. If it worked for you, then please leave a comment. If there are other small issues which I can help solve, do not hesitate to mention.

A close friend quipped, that it’s a ‘One Bed Room’ apartment that you have bought! This was right after we acquired our Mahindra Scorpio, in 2004. Vijayant Kohli was still young and declared that we should have used this money elsewhere. After all we were living in a 880 sq feet Noida Authority flat in Sec 62, next to a super-large slum township, Khora. Newly married (and barely getting over a rather close shave with our darling WagonR that eventually got a new body shell), it made more sense to put the money at the right places. You need to ignore the good advice from your loving friends and that is what we did.

001: Avinash’s Wedding. The band would return, watch out!

It was Feb 15, 2004. We were at Jaipur, attending the wedding of close friend Avinash. Smita returned the very next morning and I stayed on till noon. The plan was to return home next evening along with Manish Syal and Manish Shekhawat, with a stopover at Nahargarh. Mahindra was dilly-dallying the delivery and it was hard to talk to either the folks at the Mahindra Dealership or anyone else at Mahindra but we knew that its is a good machine and we should not get disheartneded. On Feb 16, 2004 I got a call from Mahindra that my vehicle is ready and I can get the delivery today. Jaipur was a quick 5 hour away and NH8 was indeed a highway. Manesar at that time was like a regular far-away suburb and one could drive north of 100 KMPH easily.

Smita reached from her office, which was in Safdurjung Enclave. I withdrew the balance money (Yes, in 2004, you paid only when you get the car) and after the regular paperwork, we got our car. It was indeed a big car and neither Smita nor me, had any experience of driving this size, ever.

00 Scorpio

We were driving a Maruti WagonR during that time. My memory of the first drive was that it was pretty wide and I was driving on instinct all through. With great care, we drove the baby home with a halt at Noida Sec 16A where Deepender used to work. We parked it cautiously and slept well.

For the next 9+ years, Scorpio went far and wide and here is my humble attempt at capturing those trips. I have tired to identify pictures from those trips and would add some basic info. Hopefully 10 years down the line, reading this would kindle all these beautiful memories again.

Manish started blogging almost 5 years back and in this short time, he has contributed significantly to Hindi Blogging on internet and is counted among the top Hindi bloggers. I reached out to Manish about 3 years back and he started writing his travel tales at Ghumakkar exactly two years back, i.e. July 4, 2009 with a brilliant piece on Kolkata. It was in hindi and here is the link of the story – http://www.ghumakkar.com/2009/04/07/कोलकाता-तोमार-कौतो-रुप/ . Please read it once you are done reading the interview.

Our editor, Vibha caught up with him over email and then I had a hearty chat with him on a long distance phone. I could sense that Manish loves good conversations. I was reluctant to not eat his entire night but we did end up spending enough time talking about traveling, how our views about travel is changing as a larger society, how what you write makes a difference to the bigger issue of self well-being and so on.

The below interview may not do complete justice to what we discussed but this is my best attempt at capturing our conversation in words.

Interview

Ghumakkar: Tell us about yourself. Who is Manish?
Manish : As a netizen I am a blogger who wants to express his passion for music & travel through blogging. In professional life I am a technocrat doing consultancy for Steel Authority of India Ltd in the area of thermal & energy engineering. I am based out of Ranchi, the beautiful capital city of Jharkhand.Continue reading “Ghumakkar Interview – Meet Hindi Ratna, Manish Kumar”

Vibha, our editor at Ghumakkar, was visiting India and the selfish me wanted to utilize this to a great advantage for Ghumakkar. As some of you might know, after participating in the corporate rat race for many many years, she has moved to UK for some writing inspirations. Spending her time in the beautiful city of Newcastle, studying at University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, she has taken a great diversion from what she has been doing in recent past. Ghumakkar is blessed to have someone like her running the editorial department. So coming back to my selfish motives, I tried arranging a few in-person, face to face interactions with fellow Ghumakkars and we got lucky, since Mahesh not only readily agreed but also offered to drive all the way to Noida to meet us.

So there we were, three of us, chatting over soda-pops at Haldiram’s. It was delightful and I at least didn’t feel any strangeness while chatting with Mahesh. To me, it seemed as if I have known him for ever. His warmth won us over before we could beging to talk.
Some excerpts

Q – How did you find out about Ghumakkar ? Tell us about life after Ghumakkar.

A – I make an annual pilgrimage to Doon during my kid’s summer vacations, since my in-laws are there. Every time, we try to plan for a quick excursion to a place which is not too far from Dehradoon. It was about two years back, i.e. 2009 and I was looking for some info about Lansdowne. I could find lot of sites which had basic information and mostly mentored by travel agents and tour operators. And while searching, I came across Ghumakkar and probably read this beautiful piece by Kumkum.

After that, there was no looking back. I think Ghumakkar greatly helps one to understand and know so much of the world around. Its fascinating to read about so many of these personal travel experiences. At my workplace, people call me a ‘Ghumakkar’. Off late I have got some health issues to take care of and that driving/walking long distances has not been easy but the urge to travel has only increased. I am now referred as ‘walking Ghumakkar encyclopedia’ in the matters of travel by my co-workers. That seems like a great compliment to carry.

Q – Thoughts about our monthly Newsletters. As you know, we do two newsletter every month. One on 15th of every month which goes far and wide and another at the end of month, just for the closely-knit community of Ghumakkar Authors. Has these been helpful to you ? What we can report/cover in these newsletters to make them useful ?

A – It is a great idea. The most notable is the ‘Featured Story’ since I may not had time to read everything and getting a quick reference helps a lot. I guess it should cover more of , what I call as, ‘Highlights of the Month’ ala Sapthakiki program of yesteryear Doordarshan days. If one can get a good concise glimpse of everything then there is this 2nd chance to not miss what just happened over last 30 days.

I know that these newsletters are getting archived as well and one can access older editions to catchup.

Q – Thoughts around Photo-blogs.
A – I think just having a photo blog is not very useful for the community. Unless there is enough text to explain the context, where exactly this place is, what season, which year and so on, a photo by itself doesn’t give much. There are many sites where one can find photos but then you can not make a travel decision just by looking at the photo. We should find a way to support these photos-blogs with real experiences.

In between we also talked about on what Mahesh has been doing in his work life, how it feels to be involved in super high end Medical diagnostics tools world where a single microscope may cost in excess of INR 1 Crore. His love for Gurgaon where he now lives and his annual travel to Doon and then further.

It was a very enriching and extremely rewarding experience for me (and I am guessing for Vibha as well) and we parted on the note that next meet needs to be with more people. We decided to make our first attempt at Ghumakkar living in Noida/GZB/Indirapuram/Delhi part of NCR so if you stay at one of the places and would want to sign-up, leave a comment.

All of us want to travel and most of us want to share our travel stories with friends and family. The stories happen over dinner table, over morning cup of tea or even during the commute to office. Those beautiful sights on our last trip to Himalayas or the fun we had at Goa are always waiting to be unfolded on the first opportunity we get and the satisfaction which comes in the form of oohs, and aahs make our day. After all, we live for each other and happy experience are meant to spread further and farther.

At Ghumakkar, we try hard to make the whole process easier and while we try our best to provide you an easy way to keyboard them, its never easy enough. Looking at an unfinished story amid drafts by a fellow author is not at all a rare sight and that is what prompted us to think hard on what can we do more. Most often, its the pictures but then there are a ton of other things like putting the right categories, marking the destination on the map, inserting the “more” tag, writing your bio and the list goes on. All of this is what we call as the ‘necessary tax’ and this allows your story to look best, categories allow visitors to find your story in a structured way and the map-location tells them easily on where that place is.